158 THE SECRET OF SAHARA: KUFARA 



A band of "hattab" — small mounds with some brush- 

 wood and fodder — surrounds the whole oasis. Some of 

 the smaller villages contain but two or three houses. The 

 larger dwellings are made of sand and stones, and the 

 poor ones are merely shelters of woven palm leaves with 

 small, square courts of palms. 



Most of this information came from the Sheikh el 

 Madeni, whose people had originally lived in Jaghabub, 

 where they had a violent quarrel with another family of 

 ekhwans. Blood had been shed and Sayed Ahmed 

 Sherif had arbitrarily ordered the emigration of the 

 Madeni to Taiserbo, where two brothers now hved. The 

 one we met had quarrelled with them, and been banished 

 to Buseima. It speaks well for the prestige of the 

 Senussi family that the Madeni are still their loyal ad- 

 herents, though poor Sidi Mohammed spoke of Kufara 

 and Jaghabub as centres of civilisation and culture and 

 Buseima as the back of beyond. 



We spent hours drawing sand maps in the firelight, 

 while a waning moon gleamed pale in the amazing sky 

 of Africa, sapphire blue, yet soft as the azure veils of 

 a Circassian bride. Occasionally the toothless Farraj 

 challenged an imaginary passer-by with a sharp "Min?" 

 Occasionally there was a rustle in the palms, which Shakri 

 said was a cat who wanted to investigate our temporary 

 larder. Before that night I had no idea how exciting it 

 was trying to make geography. For a year I had worked 

 and plotted to reach Kufara because the thought of this 

 holy oasis, nucleus of the greatest Islamic confraternity, 

 rigidly guarded from every stranger, the centre of the 

 mighty influence against which every European Power 

 has battled in turn, stirred my imagination. As I 

 gradually learned more about this group of desert cities, 

 Hawari, Jof , Boema, Tolelib, Tolab, Zuruk and the holy 

 Taj, and realised how they represented the spider at the 



